


Friends in Low Places

by Ilthit



Category: Original Work
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Car Accidents, Demon Who Was Purposefully Locked Out Of Hell/Confused Exorcist Hired To Get Him Home, Demons, Exorcisms, Gen, Gen or Pre-Slash, M/M, Priests, Smoking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-06
Updated: 2020-07-06
Packaged: 2021-03-04 23:06:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,434
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25114360
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ilthit/pseuds/Ilthit
Summary: Father Bates does exorcisms on the side. It's not good for the soul.
Relationships: Original Male Character/Original Male Character
Comments: 16
Kudos: 23
Collections: Original Works Opportunity 2020





	Friends in Low Places

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Dragonshifter](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dragonshifter/gifts).



“Are you sure about this?” asked Father Bates. He lit his cigarette from the last black candle. That always gave him a certain tingle on the inhale, especially when the ritual was already underway. 

“Get on with it,” the demon snapped.

The summoning circle glowed faintly in the dimness of the rental room, the points of the pentagram punctuated by more candles. In the middle of it, ‘Harry’ sat cross-legged, naked aside from the charm hung about his neck. Without his mortal disguise, Bates would have judged him one of the lesser nobility of Hell, more like an angel in appearance than a gremlin or an animal. The ones at the top of the infernal food chain—you could only see the twist in them if you looked closely. 

He’d first met this one at the bar across from the church. He’d been a tall, thin young man then, all limbs and ginger hair wrapped up in jeans and leather, glittering with piercings. A lot of hot air—or so Bates had thought he was at first. Until he’d seen what Harry could do. And now he was seeing Harry for what he was. Still all limbs, only two more of them, and a back covered in orange scales. 

“Have some patience. You’re not actually as young as you look, are you?”

“I paid you. Good solid human money, it was, and me blood and skin to boot, for protection. So just send me back home already.”

“You never told me why Hell kicked you out in the first place.” Bates pushed himself up on his feet and paced the room. The living room of this place he kept outside of London for these occasions was empty save for a cabinet, the circle, and the heavy curtains drawn over the twilight outside. The kitchen door was open; he could see the light of the coffee machine glowing red. “Or why you’d want to go back. You’d think getting to leave is better than what they’d do to you down there.”

Harry lowered his chin, his eyes on Bates like a predator’s. “They’re afraid of me. Afraid of what I can do.”

“That little trick with the streetlights?” Bates took a drag of his cigarette and leaned on the door frame. “It was pretty, I suppose. I’d never seen hellfire behave like that before.”

“Oh, come on, Jesus-eater. It’s none of you mortals’ business what happens in Hell.” 

“It is when it’s likely to come back to bite me.”

Harry grinned, showing sharp teeth, more than up to the task of tearing up soft flesh. “There’s always a risk, isn’t there?”

“Tell me, or I’ll give you back your blood and your skin and your money, and we'll be done here, all right?”

“Fine. Me and me mates are going to overthrow the Morningstar.”

Bates choked on a drag, coughed, and broke out in laughter. “Are you now.”

Harry did not seem to mind, but watched Bates while he recovered. “We are.”

“Well, good luck,” said Bates, and placed the final candle down in its place. The lines’ glow flared into a knife’s edge brightness.

\- 

The white electric light of the rectory’s bathroom had no mercy. Bates washed his eyes with cold water a third time and drew a hand across his chin. He could’ve sworn it had been baby-bum smooth just two hours ago, but King Alcohol, it seemed, wanted everyone to know he’d had a rough night. 

Thirty-seven was too young for a lot of things Bates was and did, but today the man in the mirror looked like he was pushing fifty. It took a lot out of a fellow, this side business of his. More even than the bloody drink. 

“Hey,” said a voice behind him. He turned, but no-one was there. “You look almost as bad as I feel.” Bates turned back to the mirror, and there, standing behind his reflection, was Harry. Harry the way he’d first known him, retro Metallica shirt and all, but across his face was a dark purple bruise and his nose was dripping fresh blood down to his mouth and past his chin in a thin trickle. 

Bates looked behind himself again. No one. 

“Went well, did it?” he asked the mirror. 

“A little set-back. Trapped in a sideways place now. I don’t suppose you’d fancy helping me out again?”

“Remind me again why they don’t just kill you?” 

Harry shrugged. “Conflicting contracts. Infernal politics. It’s complicated.”

“You have the money?”

“Always. And friends.” 

“Right. I’ve got an hour before the youth meeting. Let me get my kit, and please try not to upset the fellow with the widow’s peak if he comes in here. He’s my boss.” 

Harry shrugged again, which was not promising, but hell, after the past few days, Bates needed the money. 

\- 

The third time Bates met Harry, he was dying. 

He hadn’t meant to drink. He’d thought bringing the car meant he wouldn’t. The spot was in the middle of nowhere, north country, some old Irish rebel who wanted his last rites before an upcoming brain surgery, and his daughters, one of whom was Father Horton’s sister’s wife’s cousin or something of the sort. Obligations. Traditions. Had to be someone from St Christopher’s for daddy, and Horton had two weddings and a christening that weekend, so Bates had taken his third-hand Renault down in the morning, in full beautiful sunlight that made his head hurt, and spent the day listening to drawn-out vowels and the life story of half of everyone in the village, whether or not they were connected to the old fellow, or even present, and at the end of it, someone had asked him to join them for a pint. Cranberry juice, then, they’d said, when Bates had said he wasn’t drinking. Only somehow that juice had ended up with more vodka than cranberry, and was followed by a beer and then a whiskey, and in the meanwhile those country roads had turned dark. 

“I’m not coming with you,” he said to the young man in a casualty nurse's uniform who bent over his trolley as the ambulance bounced and swerved on the road. The siren penetrated, pounded his head. “I’ve got a suite booked on the other side.”

Harry smiled, and Bates remembered his teeth, but he remembered that bruise too, and he wasn’t afraid. “Don’t worry. I’m not here for that.” Harry reached over and stroked Bates’s forehead. Bates jerked his head to the side, but the motion made it throb and his vision filled with black spots. 

Then the pain was gone. Just gone. He blinked, and the nurse had black hair swept back in a bun, and his brown eyes were serious and detached. 

They said the damage had looked much worse on the site, that God must have stood by and protected him. Almost nothing left of the Renault, and yet here Bates was. Not even a limp. 

They expected him to stop drinking. That would have made a better story. 

-

“Am I your favourite mortal or something?” Bates asked Harry the fourth time they met. It was a quiet spring evening on the balcony of Bates’s room at the rectory, that year everyone learned the names of various surgical masks and how to attend a teleconference. The weather was nice, the traffic distant, and out here on the cramped balcony with the peace lilies and the plastic garden furniture, Bates didn’t have to think about the pile of dishes still waiting inside. It had been a while since that second garden chair had been filled. “You don’t owe me, you know. If anything, I owe you.”

That shrug. Like Harry had so much more to tell than he ever could, so why even bother trying. “Maybe I just fancy you.”

“Sorry, mate, I'm off the market,” said Bates, lifting a clinking glass of whiskey in salute, “but I must be getting a little lonely, because I’m almost glad to see you.”

Harry leaned on the arm of his chair and flashed his grin. “I’ll take that. For now.”

“My guardian demon,” Bates slurred, and drank to Harry’s high-pitched laugh.

-

“You bloody did it, didn’t you,” said Bates the fifth time they met.

The angel hovered over the altar at St Christopher’s, his divine light spilling out into the church. It was terrible and blinding and all-revealing, and it shred Jude Bates up into tiny pieces of fluttering soul and skin and failure. 

That grin again. It always could tear you apart. “Told you,” said Harry. 

And he descended, arms outstretched. 


End file.
